Aluminium or aluminum (in North American English) is a chemical element in the periodic table with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. A silvery, ductile metal, aluminium is found primarily as the ore bauxite and is remarkable for its resistance to oxidation, its strength, and its light weight. Aluminium is used in many industries to make millions of different products and is very important to the world economy. Structural components made from aluminium are vital to the aerospace industry and very important in other areas of transportation and building in which light weight, durability, and strength are needed.

These alloys form vital components of aircraft and rockets. When aluminium is evaporated in a vacuum it forms a coating that reflects both visible light and radiant heat. These coatings form a thin layer of protective aluminium oxide that does not deteriorate as silver coatings do. Coating telescope mirrors is another use of this metal.

Friedrich Wöhler is generally credited with isolating aluminium (Latinalumen, alum) in 1827. However, this metal was produced for the first time in impure form two years earlier by Danish physicist and chemist Hans Christian Ørsted.
Henri Sainte-Claire Deville presented in a book in 1859 two improvements to the process as to substitute potassium to sodium and double instead of simple chlorure.
The invention of the Hall-Héroult process in 1886 made extracting aluminium from minerals inexpensive, and so it is now in common use throughout the world.

Ancient Greeks and Romans used this metal as dyeing mordant and as an astringent to bind wounds, and alum is still used as a styptic. In 1761 Guyton de Morveau proposed calling the base alum alumine.

Aluminium was, when it was first discovered, extremely difficult to separate from the rocks it was part of and, since the whole of Earth's aluminium was bound up in the form of compounds, the most difficult metal on earth to get, despite the fact that it is one of the planet's most common.

For a while, precious aluminium was more valuable than gold, but the prices dropped continually and collapsed altogether when an easy extraction method was discovered in 1889.

Recovery of this metal from scrap (via recycling) has become an important component of the aluminium industry. A common practice since the early 1900s, aluminium recycling is not new. It was, however, a low-profile activity until the late 1960s when recycling of aluminium beverage cans finally placed recycling into the public consciousness. Sources for recycled aluminium include automobiles, windows and doors, appliances, containers and other products.

Aluminium is a reactive metal and cannot be extracted from its ore, bauxite (Al2O3), through reduction with carbon. Instead it is extracted by electrolysis — the metal is oxidized in solution and then reduced again to the pure metal. The ore must be in a liquid state for this to occur. However, bauxite has a melting point of 2000°C, which is too high a temperature to achieve economically. Instead, the bauxite for many years was dissolved in molten cryolite, which lowers the melting point to about 900°C. But now, cryolite has been replaced by an artificial mixture of aluminium, sodium, and calciumfluorides. This process still requires a great deal of energy, and aluminium plants usually have their own power stations nearby.

The electrodes used in the electrolysis of bauxite are both carbon. Once the ore is in the molten state, its ions are free to move around. The reaction at the negative cathode is

Al3+ + 3e- → Al

Here the aluminium ion is being reduced (electrons are added). The aluminium metal then sinks to the bottom and is tapped off.

The positive anode oxidizes the oxygen of bauxite, which then reacts with the carbon electrode to form carbon dioxide:

2O2- → O2 + 2e-

O2 + C → CO2

This cathode must be replaced often because it turns into carbon dioxide. Despite the cost of electrolysis, aluminium is a cheap and widely used metal. Aluminium can now be extracted from clay, but this process is not economical.

Cosmogenic Al-26 was first applied in studies of the Moon and meteorites. Meteorite fragments, after departure from their parent bodies, are exposed to intense cosmic-ray bombardment during their travel through space, causing substantial Al-26 production. After falling to Earth, atmospheric shielding protects the meteorite fragments from further Al-26 production, and its decay can then be used to determine the meteorite's terrestrial age. Meteorite research has also shown that Al-26 was relatively abundand at the time of formation of our planetary system. Possibly, the energy released by the decay of Al-26 was responsible for the remelting and differentiation of some asteroids after their formation 4.6 billion years ago.

The official IUPAC spelling of the element is aluminium; however, Americans and Canadians generally spell and pronounce it aluminum. In 1807, Humphrey Davy proposed aluminum for the name of this then-undiscovered metal, but he later decided to change the name to aluminium to conform with the "ium" convention used in most element names. The aluminium spelling then became the most common in both Britain and the United States. Then the United States changed over time to aluminum for popular purposes. The official name used in the United States in the field of chemistry remained aluminium until 1926 when the American Chemical Society decided to use the name aluminum in its publications.

In 1990 the IUPAC adopted aluminium as the standard international name for the element. Aluminium is also the name used in French, Dutch, German, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish; Italian uses alluminio, Portuguese alumínio and Spanish aluminio. (The use of these words in these other languages is one of the reasons IUPAC chose aluminium over aluminum.) In 1993, IUPAC recognized aluminum as an acceptable variant, but still prefers the use of aluminium.

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